More Car Photography - Drive It Day

The FBHVC - Federation of British Historic Vehicle Clubs - were having their annual run last weekend, centred on the Royal Oak Pub in Bishopstone. I was there, for the third year running, to photograph the cars and their equally interesting owners.

Prints available at www.photoboxgallery.com/martinphelps

Drive It Day - Images by Martin Phelps

Car Photography

A couple of weeks ago I hooked up with an old acquaintance who now runs a business buying, restoring and selling classic european cars - www.europeanclassiccars.co.uk - and took some photos of a rather nice old Citroen DS Super 5 which he's selling. It's the first time I've dealt with trying to light something so unforgiving - curved, shiny, metallic, reflective - there's no place to hide the lights, so you have to make the highlights part of the composition. Which is (comparatively) easy in a professional studio, but a bear of a task in a dark barn with lots of other cars and assorted junk in the background, limited space, and a doorway that's leaking too much light to work with long exposures. The results were a bit underwhelming, but at least next time I can go with a much better idea of how to solve the problems. 

Down in the Hood - Melksham Town Criers Competition

Saturday afternoon in the Market Place in Melksham, and there are lots of people in very loud clothing taking turns to shout at the top of their lungs about how wonderful it is to live where they do. Places like Ilfracombe, Warminster, Bromyard and Wootton Bassett. Are these the Gangsta Rappers of rural England?

Later they were due to shout about the benefits of healthy eating, in an initiative sponsored by the NHS and something called "change4life" If you call it a name that looks like a text message, the kids will surely come, right?
The irony of having 16 walking Toby jugs shout about the benefits of regular mealtimes, low sugar cereals and "2 snax max" seems to be lost on the geniuses who thought of that one.

Wedding Site UP!

Well I finally got it done. 

It's not exactly the most full-featured wedding photography website I've ever seen, but it is at least up and running, and gives a little more information than the previous version which said pretty much "give me a call". 

It's at www.martinphelps.com/weddings - competitive prices, slick Jorgensen albums, pre-wedding shoots, trash-the-dress-shoots, documentary/reportage style, a gallery of recent images, ...it's all there. Oh, and in addition to the 2-300 edited photos as standard with each package, I make available all the out-takes as lo-res .jpgs, so if I missed anything in the edit that's really important, you can dig it out and get me to run an edit on the original raw file. Can anyone give me a reason all wedding photographers don't do that?

Bashstreet Skinhead

Here's a selection of shots from last weekend - a low-budget film shoot in Chippenham, for a company called "Kandu Arts for Sustainable Development", run by Ed Deedigan and Gracie Redfern. Actor Con O'Neill was lending his experience and support to an amateur cast. 

Bashstreet - Images by Martin Phelps

I can't relate what the story was about as I haven't read a script. The scene I was there for involved bands, a nightclub, a number of rather scary looking skinheads and some Elvis lookalikes. Or rather, some Elvis lookalike lookalikes.